Taking it to the Drug Warriors--Is It Time for Direct Action?
You know, a guy gets tired fighting for decades for the right to do something which should be our right anyway. Yeah, I know the litany: We've got to play the game...if you don't like the law, change it...the political process is slow...we can't be impatient...we have to educate politicians and cultivate law enforcement....blah blah blah.
Well, in the face of the no-progress Hinchey-Rohrabacher vote and the continuing defiance of the will of California voters by the DEA, not to mention all the other drug war horrors, I'm prepared to once again make inciteful (if not insightful) calls for direct action against these downpressors.
1. Let's take the DEA's war on medical marijuana patients and providers to the DEA. Let's shut 'em down in California. Blockade their offices, and not for symbolic civil disobedience purposes, but for the actual purpose of disrupting their activities.
2. Let's really take it to the DEA. These black-suited, paramilitary-style goons presumably have homes in the area. I'd like to see protestors on the sidewalk in front of their houses. Ooh, but you say it's not polite or uncouth to do that sort of thing! Well, I frankly find DEA goons kicking down doors and arresting harmless people who didn't do anything to anybody pretty impolite and uncouth. Maybe they'll enjoy explaining to their neighbors (two out of three of whom voted for Prop 215) how they earn a living. These thugs need to pay a price for what they do, and I personally don't care if it offends the sensibilities of some of our more delicate members. And I don't buy their "I'm only following orders" excuse, either. It didn't fly at Nuremburg, and it shouldn't fly now. It's time for public shaming and shunning.
3. And maybe we should be focusing on a mass march aimed at national DEA headquarters one of these months. Again, the purpose would be practical--not symbolic--to shut the monster down. This is an agency that needs to be abolished, and until we can accomplish that, the least we can do it make it impossible for it to function properly.
3. More broadly, let's attack the snitch system that underpins the drug war. Last week, we did a newsbrief on the couple in Philadelphia indicted for posting flyers outing a snitch. They copied information from the Who's A Rat? web site, which is protected by the First Amendment. The folks in Philadelphia are charged with intimidating witnesses--by making public information about what they are doing--and I hope they fight that case all the way. Snitches have no right to have their exploits go unsung. In solidarity with the Philadelphia folks, and everyone who has suffered from drug war snitchery, I propose that DRCNet enter into a collaboration with Who's a Rat? by posting the information about one undercover officer (they list more than 400) or one snitch (they list over 4000) online each week. Personally, I would rather go after the narcs than the snitches, most of whom are victims themselves. ("You're gonna go to prison for 30 years and get raped by hardened cons if you don't give up the names..."). Snitches may be victims of circumstance (and a weak values system), but narcs do this horrid work for a living, either because they believe in or they like it. I want to see their names and mugs plastered across the internet. I don't suppose my boss will agree with me on this one, although I'd like to hear why not.
5. Police on a drug raid in Belfast this week were met by a rock-throwing mob. Mindful of the incitement statutes, I have no comment.
Whaddya think, folks? I'm really, really tired of waiting for lamebrain politicians to protect me from these thugs. I guess I'm going to have to do it myself. With your help.
More "responsible" members of our movement generally shy away from tactics like these. Let them be responsible. I want to fight back.
digg
redditI take it to the man all the time
Comment posted by massenberg420 on Wed, 09/05/2007 - 10:08amI take it to the man each and every day!,
We all know and remember 9/11 BUT we could have had a terror attack clear back in 1985 had it not been for ME risking my life.
You see in 1985 I was guarding a Rock quarry and had seen some suspects up by the TNT shack when I made my rounds. They noticed me going up the dirt road to see them and they took off to the back of the Complex.
I chased them down and they ran out of road so they tried to cross a old train bridge in their pick-up. I walked up to them with my night stick in one hand and my mace in the other ready for action and was talking to the two people in the pick-up when a number three man came up from behind and hit me in the middle of my back with a baseball bat.
After that I was pushed off that bridge and went down 15 feet onto boulders in a dry river bottom. Because of the attack I ended up not being able to walk for six months and it took seven years to walk somewhat normal again.
Now if you think that's bad it gets much worse!
I met this great woman that has two children she has raised herself. They are 10 and 13 now. The Doctors have tried everything to control the pain I live with. C-7 is blocking fluid from my spine and crushing nerves. And even with 500MG of Morphine and 60MG of endocet I was still going through 12 or more seazures a day all due to PAIN then blacking out from the suffering.
In Washington State the Medical use of Marijuana is allowed under a Doctors care. The Anacourtes Housing Manager would not honor my doctors statement and gave my family a eviction notice that to this day I am still fighting in Appeals court. You see the first Judge I had in this case said that he did not care how much suffering I was going through and that he did not think I-692 was a good idea and would NOT honor what the voters voted for.
With that we were out on the street for a month till the town of Colfax, WA help out my family. If you go to my web site and read the Front Pafe story the Moscow-Pullman news did on me three weeks ago you will read that even the peoson in charge of the police here likes me and my family AND HONORS MEDICAL MARIJUANA. The funny thing about that is that he used to be on the Tri-cities drug task force.
Now YES we CAN fight back but like this. Besides fighting in court, I have started up a world-wide Podcast that is getting over 9,000 hits a month talking about the Medical use of Marijuana. I have also started up a Video show and I go on stage at Hemp fest events, Interview people like the Famous Jack Herer and others.
Also I call up 10 people from Congress each week and let them know I am talking about them that week on the show and I tell them point blank that I let people on my show know if they support the sick and disabled if they don't then I ask people not to vote for them ever again.
Also I am in STRONG support of the Nation-Wide STRIKE planned for 9/11 to show the Feds we are tired of what they are doing. Hell the Vets that are in the war can't even get the help THEY need because things in the Federal Government are so messed up that at the end of EACH month any money that the VA hospital has left goes from them into WELFARE!!\
PLEASE HELP Marc Emery,
Marc informed me that on the 17th of last month Canada allowed the DEA of the USA to serve papers on him to force Marc Emery to the USA.
Now if this is allowed to happen the DEA plans to KILL him.
Make calls do what you can to stop this!!
If you wish to be on my show about Medical Marijuana check out www.marijuanafactorfiction.com or call Adam at 509-397-3252
Yes, Yes, Yes
Comment posted by puregenius on Mon, 07/30/2007 - 3:27pmMore direct action is definitely needed. We have no need use violent tactics of any sort because we feel no need to control people like prohibitionists do.
Brandenburg v Ohio
Comment posted by Ben Masel on Mon, 07/30/2007 - 7:14pmhttp://laws.findlaw.com/us/395/444.html
Freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing
imminent
lawless action and is
likely to incite or produce
such action.
Taking It To The Man
Comment posted by Giordano on Mon, 07/30/2007 - 12:56pmThere has been no call to violence here. Only a reactionary would interpret Philip Smith’s article as a call to violence.
Taking it to the Man doesn’t require violence. Remember the strategies of the late, great Abbie Hoffmann? It’s called Monkey Warfare. That’s right. As opposed to guerilla warfare. For a refresher, read what Abbie said and did.
In a nutshell, monkey warfare comes down to poking the DEA in the ass with some practical joke or staged event, standing back, and watching these ignorant careerist hypocrites overreact and shoot themselves in both feet. Believe me, it works every time.
During the Viet Nam War demonstrations, my fellow co-conspirators and I perpetrated the fetal pig incident. We scored more inches of column space in the next day’s major newspaper than all the local anti-war riots received on that same day. (Details of the fetal pig incident withheld to protect the guilty, and include currently practicing doctors, lawyers and scientists).